Can science fix climate change?

This topic landed on my radar screen this morning with a tweet that announced a forthcoming book from Mike Hulme: From Mike Hulme’s web site:

(23 September 2013) ‘Can science fix climate change?‘ I have just submitted my full manuscript of this new book title to Polity Press. The book argues against the research and deployment of large-scale sunlight reflection methods, especially stratospheric aerosol injection, as a response to climate change. The book will appear in the New Year as part of their New Human Frontiers series. Here is a brief summary:

“In this book I outline the reasons why I believe this particular climate fix—creating a thermostat for the planet–is undesirable, ungovernable and unreliable. It is undesirable because regulating global temperature is not the same thing as controlling local weather and climate. It is ungovernablebecause there is no plausible and legitimate process for deciding who sets the world’s temperature. And it is unreliable because of the law of unintended consequences: deliberate intervention with the atmosphere on a global-scale will lead to unpredictable, dangerous and contentious outcomes. I make my position clear: I do not wish to live in this brave new climate-controlled world. In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel ‘Brave New World’, his ironic Utopia was brought about by totalitarian engineering of the human subject–‘Yes, everybody’s happy now’. For those promoting the virtues of designer climates the equivalent pathological Utopia would be brought about by totalitarian engineering of the planet.”

IMO, Mike Hulme is one of the most interesting voices in the climate debate. On this particular topic, I am with him 100%, and I certainly look forward to reading his new book.

Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry. This stark warning comes from the draft summary of the latest climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Delegates from national governments are discussing the draft this week, prior to its release on Friday morning.

According to one of its lead authors, and the latest draft seen by New Scientist, the report will say: “CO2-induced warming is projected to remain approximately constant for many centuries following a complete cessation of emission. A large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human timescale, except if net anthropogenic CO2 emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period.”

The draft report says the available evidence now suggests that above a certain threshold of warming, the Greenland ice sheet will almost disappear within approximately 1000 years, which will result in 7 metres of global sea-level rise. It estimates that the threshold may lie between 1 °C and 4 °C of warming, but is not confident of this figure.

My reaction to reading the title of this article can be summed up in two words: ‘insane’ and ‘megalomania.’ Upon actually reading the text, it seems that this is Fred Pearce’s inference based upon come of the conclusions from the WG1 SPM, and no clues are really provided regarding WGIII.

JC message to IPCC: Once you sort out the uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates and fix your climate models, let us know. Then please do the hard work of understanding regional vulnerability to climate variability and change before you tell us what constitutes ‘dangerous’ climate change. And let us know if you come up with any solutions to this ‘problem’ that aren’t worse than the potential problem itself.

A thread at Dan Kahan’s, where Willis is absolutely certain that Dan used a screenname as a “sock puppet” to fool readers (a “sock puppet” that just coincidentally happened to contain Dan’s initials).

It couldn’t possibly be that Willis formulated a mistaken conclusion because he made a stupid mistake. Nah, that’s not possible….

I did make a mistake, Joshua, and I encourage people to read the link. The mistake I made was in assuming that the owner of a site wouldn’t be using a sockpuppet on their own site. I thought it might actually be your sockpuppet, if you recall. But I was completely fooled by Dan … in part because when I asked “what’s going on here” he perpetuated the hoax, rather than saying “it’s me posting under another name”.

Yes, I was fooled, Joshua … and call me crazy, but I know of no other site owner who posts as a sockpuppet on his own site and doesn’t explain when asked. Judith doesn’t post under a separate Richard Windsor identity, nor does Anthony, nor Steve M, nobody does that. So is it a surprise I was fooled?

No … but it’s a surprise Dan is fooling people, and I for one will not trust a word he says in future.

w.

PS—Your stalker’s fixation with me and my actions is kinda creepy. What does what happened at Dan’s site have to do with the current discussion? You don’t discuss my ideas, it’s just another of your endless ad hominem attacks …

There was more to it than just pollution. Not that pollution is good or anything, but the dramatic drop in SST circa 1942 for what ever reason was not likely due to war time pollution. I believe the models are having to take a harder look at aerosols and solar because of the current divergence.

It is no coincidence that shifts in ocean and atmospheric indices occur at the same time as changes in the trajectory of global surface temperature. Our ‘interest is to understand – first the natural variability of climate – and then take it from there. So we were very excited when we realized a lot of changes in the past century from warmer to cooler and then back to warmer were all natural,’ Tsonis said.

A significant problem with climate science theory and thus the climate models is the question of cause and effect. The models see the ocean oscillations not as oscillations but as a response to the forcings. As a result the models try and fit random events such as volcanoes and human activity to match the oscillations, which destroys the predictive ability of he models.

A similar situation would be to look at the average temperature of the earth over 1 year (temperature not anomaly). It oscillates slightly due to the differential land mass in the northern and southern hemisphere. CO2 levels display a similar annual oscillation. Now try and predict next years temperature from the CO2 oscillation. You will get garbage, because the temperature oscillation and the CO2 oscillation both result from the tilt of the earth’s axis and the differential land mass in the N and S hemisphere’s.

Willis E is essentially inept as a scientist. He had a post recently at WUWT where he was trying to deny volcanic disturbances as a forcing function. He forgot to remove the natural fluctuations from the global temperature signal, so that the transient suppressions due to volcanic particulates can be observed.

It is amazing how well the Southern Oscillation Index (from NCAR) fits the natural fluctuations of a temperature record such as GISS, and only shows deviations in recent years during the big volcanic disturbances.

From this one index and the sporadic volcano data which temporarily suppresses the temperature, all natural variability seems to be accounted for and all that is left is an upward warming trend.

Now I understand why Stefan and Tamino’s work is so straightforwardly practical. This is why Kanaka and Xie’s recent work is so important.

The SOI is one of those noise sources that has an extremely strong reversion to the mean, showing barely any deviation from time stationarity over the decades:
The SOI signal is stationary over decades as it shows very little trend.

If there is another variation that is of longer period than the ENSO, I don’t see it.

This is so easy to do that others have applied simple 2-box models using the SOI as a noise compensation to get a better fit to the global temperature records. Some terrific looking model fits include the following:
and

The proof is in the pudding. If a theory has been able to successfully predict the future, it may be correct. If it has failed to predict the future, it is without a doubt wrong. GCM’s have without exception fallen into the second category.

The notion that science can predict the future from first principles is inherently wrong. You cannot “average” probabilities and arrive at a meaningful result for the future. The future is not an average.

The success of tidal prediction demonstrates how to predict the future. It is not done using first principles. First principles are not able to model the complexity. Instead we use the same techniques that early humans used to predict the coming seasons.

If you look at climate over the past few million years it is quite obvious that the behavior of the climate system is cyclical. Complex but cyclical. Temperature oscillates in a fashion that is quite different from noise. Our current interglacial is only one of a series of similar climate oscillations.

So to understand natural variability you must first be able to predict this oscillation. Something that is quite beyond the current capabilities of climate science, because they are still tied to the notion that climate oscillations do not exist.

The notion that an oscillation will respond linearly to a forcing is complete nonsense. Think of a pendulum. The exact same forcing may increase or decrease the amplitude of the pendulum, depending on where in the cycle the forcing is applied. If you don’t know the position of the pendulum in its cycle you cannot predict the effect of the forcing.

Having done an archaeological degree and looked at the (non) evidence for Kelts in Scotland … which history do you mean? That of the establishment academics who tell us that Scotland was full of Kelts, or that of the Roman writers and modern sceptics who tell us that the Kelts were a minor tribe amongst the Gauls in France and that there were no Kelts in Britain.

“The book argues against the research and deployment of large-scale sunlight reflection methods, especially stratospheric aerosol injection, as a response to climate change.” Professor Curry, do you believe this sort of geoengineering, often referred to as “Chemtrails”, is happening on any scale today? Some are quite convinced; I have been a bit skeptical but realize that the govt is willing to do most anything….

I can see Dr. Curry is in full topic expansion rather than deal with the primary question;

“Why doesn’t Dr. Curry denounce the IPCC and the agenda it represents as politically corrupt and call for it to be defunded and abandoned?
Explaining that the corruption is based of Green Left and state needs to regulate carbon interests.”

The evidence of this is very clear and now just days before another cooked report is presented would be a good opportunity to come clean. 25 Years ago would have been better but you have to look forward.

The above article is pregnant with warming presumptions and is worthless.

We haven’t even properly defined the Global Warming “Problem” yet and most climate scientists think they know how to solve the “Problem”. The Obama Administration thinks (or are trying to make us think) they are “solving the problem” with unilateral USA CO2 emissions control with a long pipeline of new proposed regulations and highly questionable Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) calculation methodology which has not had the required by law public comment period or independent scientific peer review. This is madness that Professional Engineers who are so loose with the facts and un-validated models could be expected to be slapped with malpractice liability suits.

A Problem needs to be defined in terms of a harmful deviation from the norm that has already occurred. I don’t believe anyone has made the case that current global warming, including the last 15 year “pause” is a harmful deviation from the norm of the last 10,000 years of very stable climate compared to prior history. (A Potential Problem is more like what we are actually dealing with and has a different action plan than mitigating a problem for which Root Cause is actually known.) The Problem also needs to be specified in terms of What?, Where?, When? and How Much? IS the Problem occurring and the IS NOT occurring answers to the same 4 questions. Assembling the data to answer all of these IS and IS NOT questions should provide the data pattern required to determine Root Cause of the harmful deviation from the norm.

We don’t have a “Global Warming” problem because the earth’s surface is not warming uniformly everywhere. The temperature record of the Continental USA does not reveal any harmful deviation from a norm. We need to define a harmful deviation from the norm in at least one location to specify a Problem. If we can define the Problem for a large number of locations, then we might be able to claim we have a global warming problem, but let’s focus on defining where we currently have an earth surface warming situation that is actually a harmful deviation from normal. I haven’t been able to specify such a location yet.

I have concerns about Greenland getting too warm and losing net ice mass to cause a harmful, rapid sea level rise, but this has not happened yet. What one may decide to do about preventing ice mass loss from Greenland does not necessarily need a solution that cools the entire earth’s surface. Climate Science needs a big dose of Engineering thinking and practice to address its concerns about changes in earth’s surface temperature.

It’s probably a normal variation IMO but we really have nothing in the paleo realm to confirm or deny the normalcy of it. GAT appears to have changed with commensurate rapidity even in recorded history such as Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period, and the Little Ice Age.

So is it normal? Maybe. Unprecedented? Probably not. Harmful? Doesn’t appear that way. Civlization has made great gains amidst the warming of the past century. No harm no foul.

It’s probably a normal variation IMO but we really have nothing in the paleo realm to confirm or deny the normalcy of it.

I don’t care about your opinion — I’m interested in the science.
How “normal” of a “variation” is a 1.5 F warming in 30 years?
In any 30-yr record, how often does a 1.5 F (or greater) warming occur?
And is there really no paleo records on the question? That’s hard to believe.

Look, just because you’re a “journalist” doesn’t mean you can’t read a frickin’ graph. Ask a sportwriter to look at it for you. The temperature increased by at least 1.5 F in the early 20th century. Decreased by at least 1.5 F in the middle of the century, and recently increased again. I guess by your definition, that’s 3 “abnormal” 30 year events in a 120 year temperature record.

David Appell, there are regional paleo records that show similar rapid changes and the 1910 to 1940 was very similar. You can say that the 20th-21st century rise is exceptional for the past 200 years but even the BEST data has wicked swings between 1750 and 1820, 1816 was 1.5C down and 1.2 C up in a about 20 years. Between Volcanic aerosols and solar there have been some interesting times.

BTW, from 1901 to 1992, the Pirates averaged a pennant or post-season appearance once every 5.75 years. So I guess climate change has caused a decrease in Pirates’ success. An inverse pause on the rebound…or something like that. I’ll have to do some last minute wordsmithing before I publish.

I just want an answer to my question — how normal is a 1.5 F warming in 30 years? I don’t want to guess by looking at a graph, I’d like to know what the data says — of all 30-yr periods since the year X, how many show a warming of 1.5 F or higher?

“How ‘normal’ of a “variation” is a 1.5 F warming in 30 years?
In any 30-yr record, how often does a 1.5 F (or greater) warming occur?
And is there really no paleo records on the question? That’s hard to believe.”

If you think paleo records can accurately recreate continental average temperatures over 30 year periods to within 1.5 F, let me have your mailing address. I have these brochures for a couple bridges I’m putting up for sale. I’ll give ya a great deal.

Strange how multi observational data of weather variability
and the long view, even prior to the Industrial Revolution,
offer insights. Context matters in the Climate Debate Wars.
What appears ‘normal?’ Not much, cyclic episodic ups and
downs and gradual warminig of the inter-glacial.

I didn’t say that you believed it. I just stated it as a fact. You rabid warmists don’t know half of what you think you do. I also stated it as the reason there is no reason to answer your question.

You establish that paleo temp records are accurate to within tenths of a degree regarding continental averages over 15 year time periods, and it might be worth answering. Otherwise it’s a waste of time.

I don’t have to prove that vain pronouncements of inflated precision and certainty by climate scientists do not accurately reflect reality. They are admitting it right and left. I am not a skeptic because of my review of thousands of peer reviewed papers. Nor because of anything I have read at WUWT or Climate Audit (though I find them very informative).

I am a skeptic because the uncertainties, inaccuracies, lack of coverage, known unknowns, etc. are admitted by the consensus ideologues themselves (including yourself above), in their unguarded moments.

“In any 30-yr record, how often does a 1.5 F (or greater) warming occur?”

Three times in the last century alone.

“And is there really no paleo records on the question? That’s hard to believe.”

I don’t care what you find hard to believe. Natural recordings of temperature variation are localized for one and don’t tend to record shorter events. Ice cores are the cannonical example. They only preserve a record of a local area and because of how long it takes gas bubbles to seal the sealed bubbles are averages of several decades or more.

“Of all the 30-yr periods since 1895, only 13% have had warming of more than 1.5 F.”

“So clearly a 30-yr warming of 1.5 F or more is not very normal at all.”

Less than 13% of humans have red hair. Are redheads then not very normal at all in your opinion?

I can think of many other examples such as skin color and sexual orientation that are less than 13% of the population. Are they not very normal either?

You certainly have plenty of company in your narrow-minded opinions of what’s normal and what isn’t. Or maybe you’re just inconsistent and wouldn’t call a redhead abnormal even though you’d call warm periods that occur more frequently than red hair abnormal.

Nice job. I like parlor games. I guess that means since 2009, we’ve been back to “normal.”

Here’s my contribution. I took the data you linked to and averaged the monthly data by year. I then calculated 88 “30 year temperature changes” from the 118 complete annual records from 1895 to 2012. I broadly reproduced your results from using the >1000 “30 year temperature periods” using monthly data. (I got 14 periods with >1.5F change, 3 in the 30s and the rest more recently).

Then, I calculated a mean and st.dev. for the 88 “30 year temperature changes”. The result: 0.49 +/- 0.89 (1 st. dev.).

This is a simple error treatment that misses a lot, but it”ll do for this discussion.

Generally speaking, your definition of “normal” is within one standard deviation?

Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry.

Of course, there is a variety of ways to reverse “[g]lobal warming” without touching pCO2. “[S]scking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” is just the safest, with the least probability of unintended consequences. Shouldn’t be that hard, given the right R&D incentives and a 3-5 decade time frame.

BTW, just what’s the difference between the most severe IPCC scenario and BAU 5 decades from now?

In 2007 we formed a company to file a patent for a commercially viable method of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The method involved harnessing the heat from hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor to pump nutrient rich water from 1000m depth into the mixed layer in order to create an artificial ecosystem. The yield in commercial fish production from a 1 GW vent would be $80 million per year which would pay for the installation even without selling carbon credits. Apart from the carbon issue our scheme would make it possible to double the world’s wild fish supply within a couple of decades. You can check it out at http://www.ecofluidics.com. Our calculations are shown. Certainly some CO2 would be brought to the surface but there are many parts of the ocean (North Pacific, South Atlantic) where more carbon would be sequestered than would be released. This was our entry in the Virgin Earth Challenge. We also approached venture capitalists. No-one was interested and our patent lapsed.

The safest and most economical way to manage our slide at the end of the Holocene is to release, in a measured fashion, a little stored hydrocarbon energy, for its mild warming effect and strong plant nourishing effect.

The level of CO2 has very little to do with temperature rise. It is caused by the heat emitted from fossil fuels and nuclear power, which will cease when they are replaced with renewable energy,(solar, wind, etc.). The residual CO2 will only help the crops to grow better.

remember the solar and wind energy were going to end up as heat in the earth system anyway. there is no additional heating due to humans making use of that energy on its journey from low to high entropy. extra energy is liberated when fossil fuel is burned. that is less than the heat trapped by the greenhouse gasses but not necessarily negligible.

This is great news for all those who stand to gain from building a CO2 vacuum cleaner. Just think how much Al Gore made on Global Warming. Or how Dianne Feinstein’s husband got the first California High Speed Rail construction project. Mucho Dolares! If your smart get in on this at the ground level!! Friends of the IPCC stand to make billions.

We can build carbon absorbers on coal fired power plants but they will also remove NOX, SOX and mercury so that will be a benefit. We can go to electrical and fuel cell transportation which will clean the air over LA and urban centers. When energy prices get too high we can build nuclear power plants, which will also help desalinate sea water and let us tear down silted up dams. We can fertilize the desert and grow more things there. Then spread iron on tropical oceans to allow phytoplankton to grow, currently limited. So lots to do. Won’t change temperature but interesting experiments.

Sounds good but you have to pick a winner; that’s the hard part. Nuclear is probably dead ie: Germany just shut down their whole industry. I understand fuel cell requires too much energy to produce? They pretty much have to burn coal to provide energy for electric cars. Obama does like ‘clean’ coal though. Like you say lots to do! They still have to figure out how to get the carbon out of the atmosphere and reduce ocean acid. Most of it is doomed for failure but I guess getting the contracts will be idea.

Ordvic
Neither germany nor Japan have shut down the nuclear industry. This group of politicians said they would. China is building nuclear plants as in India. We shall see how electricity prices track industry transfers to the developing world until new political consensus emerges. US will go renewables in California while the US SW builds nuclear. California will continue to deindustrialize and rely on energy imports and expensive renewables. Lots to follow but please, no satellites with mirrors.
Scott

Great big orbiting mirrors made of aluminized micron-thick glass film. Faster, cheaper, and easier than microwave energy. Of course you can’t use it as easily as microwaves in a rectenna, but it will heat things up, if that’s what you want.

Exactly. Cooling the planet is a phuck of a lot easier than warming it. Given the last few million years of history unless we want to go back to making a living hunting wooly mammoths on mile-thick glaciers that cover the northern hemisphere we shouldn’t worry about warming it up a little because it’s going to cool down a whole bunch when the Holocene interglacial ends and it’s already past its expiration date.

2000 years:http://www.technologyreview.com/article/416786/global-warming-vs-the-next-ice-age/
“But even that warming will not stave off the eventual return of huge glaciers, because ice ages last for millennia and fossil fuels will not.In about 300 years, all available fossil fuels may well have been consumed.Over the following centuries, excess carbon dioxide will naturally dissolve into the oceans or get trapped by the formation of carbonate minerals. Such processes won’t be offset by the industrial emissions we see today, and atmospheric carbon dioxide will slowly decline toward preindustrial levels. In about 2,000 years, when the types of planetary motions that can induce polar cooling start to coincide again, the current warming trend will be a distant memory.”

I know, Let’s explode a thousand nuclear bombs simultaneously in an attempt to nudge the planet a tad further from the sun. If that doesn’t work, at least we’ll get a few years of nuclear winter as an off-set to the deadly 1-2- degrees C. of warming.

How about we all agree to forsake prosperity, crush our cars, give up our jobs, sleep on park benches and eat government cheese until the global temperatures drop to levels acceptable to Al Gore and the Left?

Also, we could put solar panels on all roofs that would hold them and on parking lots to shade cars and generate distributed power. I will look for an article published that shows how much power that would generate. Keep pushing to 20% wind energy in the texas, offshore and high plains areas but work on not killing birds. Who knew, bird kills were an unitntended consequence.

“Once you sort out the uncertainty in climate sensitivity estimates and fix your climate models, let us know. Then please do the hard work of understanding regional vulnerability to climate variability and change before you tell us what constitutes ’dangerous’ climate change. And let us know if you come up with any solutions to this ‘problem’ that aren’t worse than the potential problem itself.”

Judith, I’m always hesitant to praise you because I know you could care less what some anonymous, ill-educated blog jockey thinks. It feels presumptuous. But I can’t help it. Your change in tone, so long in coming, is most welcome and entirely admirable. You were right to hold your fire for so long; your sense of timing couldn’t be better it seems to me.

Funny thing, one rarely if ever hears of skeptics abandoning their position and becoming warmists, unless you want to count the self-serving, disingenuous Professor Muller. if a person is to change his/her mind, it’s in the direction of skepticism. That has to be significant it seems to me.

Lolly, I know you must have a point, but in the above form I’m afraid it’s unintelligible. In any case, your analogy quickly breaks down as skeptics in the main, are not disavowing the physics. In fact, the journey to informed skepticism requires a crash course in the science. I know much more about climate science as a skeptic than I ever did as a “believer.”

In fact, it’s the *believers* in CAGW who most resemble religious fundamentalists. Their belief is unshakeable. For one example, I know you might not believe this, some deranged believers don’t even accept the pause.

“Pg does not believe in counting statistics. Watch next as he claims that I am unintelligible. That’s how rhetoric works its magic.”

To the contrary, Telescope. You’re absolutely transparent. You’re arrogant, defensive, and oh so much smarter than everyone else, and yet it’s all mostly bluster. You’re the kind of guy who likely counts his IQ points at night in order to get to sleep,

And yet you have yet to make a coherent argument as to why we should turn our society upside down with all the suffering that would entail, especially for the poor, when the problem…if indeed it really is one, remains unquantifiable. The truth is, you have no idea whether any warming won’t actually be a net benefit. You might claim you do, you might even believe you do, but the fact is you don’t, no more than anyone else does…

I would prefer to wait until Climate scientists have understood the contribution of natural variability a bit more. Then I would want to wait until they could successfully model the major sources of natural variability. Then I would get them to estimate the human contribution to climate change.

Then I would probably get them to monitor the situation for the long term.

:-) I assume that you are thinking “very long term,” perhaps 200 years? Then reincarnating Tony B to examine the historical record? Sounds good to me, as long as it is done on a minimum wage (more for Tony).

The Left’s deliberate socioeconomic intervention has already resulted in millions of deaths… and, because global warming is more social than science and nothing more than a hoax and a scare tactic to take over the economy, the Left certainly stands a good chance of surpassing the body-counts of previous Marxists.

Greenland Ice sheet disappearing…7 meters, 1 deg C trigger… sheesh. At least they didn’t use the “heat equal to 3 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second” as over at RC. Once again, these folks are DOUBLING DOWN. This behavior is pathologic and is understandable when ones house of cards is falling down. But when you have the White House and big media helping, it is still very, very dangerous.

The problem with global warming solutions is that we are asking engineers who are trying to come up with an engineering solution. If you look at all the sources of CO2 in the atmosphere, natural and man made, natural processes are taking up 98.5% of all emissions. in reality, you only have to enhance these natural processes a bit to get CO2 uptake to rise by 1.5%. But is it necessary first and foremost and then if you do succeed, how to you control these natural processes so that too much CO2 is not taken out? Ocean seeding with iron seems like a very good candidate that may lead to a cascade of additional biologic activity in the oceans and potentially high production of edible protein. But what other things get thrown out of whack when this happens?

Brazil declares war on Chad for building windfarms in the Bodele Gap. Seeks international military assistance from any nation upon which Bodele Dust settles. Calls on the once mighty UN for dustice.
=========================

Talk about what has happened When the University if Kentucky accepted that ($7 million) gift and agreed to name their basketball dormitory after the coal industry, that meant they had passed over from indifference to a manifest alliance with the coal industry. I don’t think a university ought to make an alliance with any industry. I know that’s going on at other universities, and I think it’s always a breach of intellectual integrity and reputability and a breach of public obligation.

This form of mining [mountaintopping] is literally hell for the people who live near those mine sites. I know some of them and I’ve heard the testimony of many others and I’ve seen with my own eyes what they’re going through.

What are your thoughts on climate change? I think it’s a strategical mistake to give this movement the name of climate change. Climate change is an effect and the causes are greed, pollution, waste and this insatiable appetite we have for convenience, comfort and the rest of it. What we need to be talking about is a change that ultimately is going to be a cultural change, that’s going to be a change in the way we live.

But climate change is vulnerable. It’s still not fool proof because every time it frosts in Florida some political fool will point out that it’s going the other way.

“CO2-induced warming is projected to remain approximately constant for many centuries following a complete cessation of emission. A large fraction of climate change is thus irreversible on a human timescale, except if net anthropogenic CO2 emissions were strongly negative over a sustained period.”

Neither CO2 or “hot air” has such residency times.
I wonder how the negative emissions would be achieved, plant lots of trees and eat each other in winter?

“It is ungovernable because there is no plausible and legitimate process for deciding who sets the world’s temperature.”

If Mikey believed that, he would be calling for the disbanding of the IPCC and the entire ‘global warming’ political movement. They exist for the sole purpose of placing themselves in the position of deciding where the world’s temperature is set. Their current demand is that it be 2C above the Little Ice Age. Where is Mikey’s open letter to these kooks, chastising them for their “implausible and illegitimate” demands?

“And it is unreliable because of the law of unintended consequences: deliberate intervention with the atmosphere on a global-scale will lead to unpredictable, dangerous and contentious outcomes.”

Reducing CO2 emissions is a deliberate and contentious global scale intervention with the atmosphere. Perhaps Mikey would like to elaborate on the unpredictable, dangerous and contentious outcomes from this illegitimate process?

And he doesn’t seem to notice that there would be unpredictable and contentious outcomes to people’s lives arising from deliberate intervention in global scale economies …

Doesn’t seem like he is really of the opinion that atmospheric intervention is truly ungovernable. He just isn’t interested in seeing any competition in the realm of using climate as an excuse to govern.

No need to make a global scale governance issue. USA, especially California can reduce carbon emissions as they reduce industry. But that is a choice. It won’t effect temperature. But to the extent affordable, let us build distributed solar and wind energy. Gas from fracking not encouraged but North Dakato and Texas can do that. We shall see what Germany and Japan do about their nuclear power. The French are unlikely to follow them. The Chinese and India industries will gratefull absorb the industries no longe co petitive.

Exactly. Any policy intervention such as Urgent Mitigation is explicitly attempting to “set the global thermostat” by engineering the CO2 level. As has long been noted, even married couples in the same room often have strong disagreements about where to set the thermostat. How about fragmented polities sprawled across the globe with different geographic, economic, cultural, and climatic environments? It’s nuts.

This is a strange arguments. It’s a bit like saying that interventions that aim to reduce the criminality rate, or increase the literacy rate, can’t be undertaken since they would explicitly attempt to “set the literacy or criminality rates” and we couldn’t possibly agree how many crimes should be prevented or how may children should be educated.

This is a strange arguments. It’s a bit like saying that interventions that aim to reduce the criminality rate, or increase the literacy rate …

No, temperature is nothing like either of those things. We do agree how many crimes should be prevented. Criminality is regarded as bad. by a civil society Any is too much. Literacy is regarded as good by a civil society Anything less than 100% can be improved upon.

There is no single optimum Global temperature, any more than there is a single optimum local temperature, or single optimum room temperature. The ideal temperature depends on who you are, where you are, and what you’re doing. At last count, approximately 7 Billion possible opinions.

In Newsweek, April 28, 1975, p. 64, we could read that there had been proposals such as “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers” to stop cooling of the world.
See http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

Isn’t it a tad premature to pass judgment in advance on an unknown technology, which might or might not be needed to solve problems of uncertain magnitude, 50 or 100 years from now? At this point, we know damn-all about the costs, reversibility, or risks/benefits of such a project, and who can possibly predict what will be politically acceptable a century from now? Anyone with so little respect for uncertainty as to try and make a call on this issue today — either way — probably isn’t worth listening to on any subject related to climate.

Agree that it is premature to even discuss geo-engineering “solutions” to a hypothetical future problem we don’t even know will be real and is highly unlikely to become existential over the next century.

I’d except one slight amount of geo-engineering, which is cheap, reversible, mild, and has rich, green, attendant side benefits. Furthermore, it can progress without harm to human society, economic health, and cultural diversity. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but still, can’t call it. Lot people have been talking about it lately, so it’ll come to mind sooner or later.
=============

I agree with Mike Hulme as well. And have been saying that from the beginning. Until you understand the system, changing it will always have unintended consequences. Because we do not know what we are doing!

Judith Curry, there is good news for you! Between John von Neumann’s early climate-change writings (1955), and the IPCC5 Report (2012), and the Pontifical Academy’s forthcoming Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature conference (2013), all five of your recommendations are directly addressed!

All major weather phenomena, as well as climate as such, are ultimately controlled by the solar energy that falls on the earth.

The carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by industry’s burning of coal and oil–more than half of it during the last generation–may have changed the atmosphere’s composition sufficiently to account for a general warming of the world by about one degree Fahrenheit.

Probably intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters will come in a few decades, and will unfold on a scale difficult to imagine at present.

Such actions [as future climate-control] would be more directly and truly worldwide than recent or, presumably, future wars, or than the economy at any time.

It is good to see that your concerns have been presciently foreseen by fifty-eight years, Judith Curry!

Remark Many Climate Etc readers well be relieved to know that John von Neumann was both one of the very greatest mathematician/scientists of any era, *and* an ardent political conservative.

Mike Hulme makes sense. Schemes such as the one proposed by President Obama’s science adviser, James Holdren, to inject massive amounts of sulfuric acid into the troposphere in order to block incoming sunshine are downright idiotic, as are all the other proposed geoengineering approaches.

The proposal by Fred Pearce of removing “hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere” is, indeed, “insane” and smacks of “megalomania”, as you have pointed out.

It is also extremely frightening. Just imagine – if such a scheme really worked, but overshot its goal, reducing CO2 concentrations to below 200 ppmv, thereby threatening plant life and, with it, all life on our planet!

This sounds to me like the last desperate rants of a psychopath who knows his time is limited.

The good news is that these dangerous and idiotic schemes will never really happen in a sane world where the general public has the final say.

I like your message to the IPCC: get your science straight before you charge off into making recommendations to solve a problem that may very likely be imaginary and whose unintended negative consequences you are unable to estimate.

I’ve a very bad case of cognitive and sensory dissonance; I’ve deep distrust for Hulme for his part in this disaster, so find it difficult to believe my lying eyes when they read his stuff here.
=================

While some in climate science disagree with his perspective, the late Dr. Crichton presented a talk on the language of fear which loosely promoted his then recently-issued novel “State of Fear.” The talk was given at The Independent Institute on November 15, 2005, but Crichton detailed humanity’s handiwork of destroying the Yellowstone ecosystem in order to (ostensibly) save it. Pearce’s carbon solution suggests he’s willing to duplicate humanity’s past mistakes but on a much, much larger canvas.

Chiffon Margarine said it best in the 1970s, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.”

Yes Kim. The historians will have quite a lot to write about. Some decades hence school children will shake their heads in wonder. “Was it really so?” they’ll ask their teachers, eyes wide with incredulity.

Beth Cooper, Peter Lang and those down under.
Oracle USA won America’s cup sailing race!
Beth, highland lass, Scott from the border clans sends greetings.
9-8 final win was 45 seconds. I guess your australian but close to Nz
Scott

Scott, thanks for the news. I had followed the races but got busy over the past 2 days and had not checked it. And Tony, Team America had folks from 7 nations on board. When you think about it, that is very American. ;-)

Hi highland lass. The helmsman was Aussie and the tactician British. Only one American on the crew but the San Francisco bay shone like a jewel. the race on u-tube very exciting. SF bay used to be a river valley when dry land extended to the Farallon Islands, 26 miles offshore. The earth abides but us earthlings have all sorts of fun and worries. How about a poem?

I read all the comments here but the one that states the case most succinctly and understandable for common folks like me is the very first comment by Willis. The planet cooled between 1940 and 1970 while we added more CO2 annually. This should convince even the brain dead there is no connection between CO2 and global warming.

So why can`t we move on and settle on what amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is best for all. Maybe 700 ppm would be about right based on ROM`s work in Australia. But I believe equilibrium will occur before that is possible.

Which is to say we will be extracting more CO2 than we emit in the next half century and then we will have something to really talk about. Maybe not us but another smarter generation.

I understand Methane is doing quite a lot lately, especially with this year’s northern hemispheres summer warming and events around the Arctic Tundra, I would expect Methane to be well covered in tomorrow’s report.

Two things I have found interesting lately

1) PIK have made a breakthrough in detecting a. ENSO change – should greatly improve the efficiency of modelling and give some forewarning of El Nino events:

Just because there was no warming from 1940-1970 it doesn’ t follow that CO2 has no warming effect. Non sequitur. Back then we were burning our fossil fuels the way god intended with cooling aerosols in the mix. The current pause in global warming is another matter as CO2 emission is much higher and cooling aerosol emissions much lower. What can reasonably surmise is that natural variation has a large enough magnitude to negate AGW about half the time. My bet is that the modern solar maximum is a natural variation that effects cloud formation and global average temperature along with it to a much higher degree than any model accounts for. The facts on the ground are that climate models are flawed in that they are running too hot and those models encapsulate the best ocean-atomosphere coupled physics we have. Obviously something is missing from the physics in the models.

Here’s the IPCC version – there are substabtial differences – note the LOSU on the right hand side.

I note this from AR4.

‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ AR4 WG1 3.4.4.1

Can climate science overcome the racism inherent in the environmentalist movement?

That’s not a crack form a neanderthal conservative.

“But Jones says it’s not just that the staffs of many large, mainstream environmental organizations have been historically mostly white — it’s that most of the smaller environmental justice groups are getting a fraction of the funding that the big groups recieve.”

That’s Van Jones – famous leftist extraordinaire and Obama muse. Founder of Green for All. Van Jones apparently wants to be the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton of the environmental movement. There’s all this free money flowing from governments. If he succeeds in getting even a piece….

Maybe Jesse can help him get a Budweiser distributorship in Chicago.

“Environmental justice” brings to mind the famous (apocryphal) New York Times headline – “New York destroyed by asteroid. Women and minorities hardest hit.”

“the only way of lowering temperatures would be todevise a scheme for sucking hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.”

Only hot CO2 is a threat to climate, total CO2 is unimportant. This conclusion rests on the measured specific heat of CO2 at 25C (36) v’s other atmospheric gases (29) and CO2’s rarity (<1%). Only hot CO2 has the excited modes that can absorb and radiate more heat.

"I believe this particular climate fix—creating a thermostat for the planet–is undesirable, ungovernable and unreliable. "

Probably true. But the planet already has one in the latent heat of evaporation over the Indian, Southern and Pacific oceans. To those who claim this is cancelled by precipitation I say not true because most precipitation latent heat is released high in the troposphere where it can more readily escape to space

In summary, it seems to me that the release of hot CO2 from mobile and stationary engines could be reduced in the pursuit of higher efficiency, that would be a win-win situationj for all. One way to do this is greater adoption of diesel/electric vehicles with stop/start technology. Perhaps we could prolong the 'pause' indefinetly..

“It seems the law of unintended consequences only applies to all geoengineering other than pumping out vast quantities of CO2. I wonder why.”

Introducing CO2 into the atmosphere is not geoengineering (i.e., “the deliberate large-scale manipulation of an environmental process that affects the earth’s climate, in an attempt to counteract the effects of global warming” – Oxford Dictionaries); I’m uncertain as to why you would want to label it as such given that it only adds confusion to the discussion.

And I’m uncertain that CO2 emissions at current or even elevated concentrations could be labeled pollution (i.e., “the presence in or introduction into the environment of a substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects” – Oxford Dictionaries).

Aside from the climate-modeled yet educated guesses synthesized via the periodic assessment reports, I’m uncertain as to the harmful or poisonous effects of the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2. Certainly, most any substance in “excessive” concentration or quantity is troubling, but what is that value for atmospheric CO2? I don’t believe that’s known with certainty at this point – especially so if AR5 results in an extension of ECS – in the lower range.

Also, asserting that weather events, residing within the range of natural variability, are strange, weird, or “extreme” is indicative of advocacy rather than science – sexy but essentially silly.

Modern farming has attempted to geo-engineer Nature including modifying the natural environment to fit mankind’s specific food crop and animal production purposes for close on a century now.
About all it has done is reveal how versatile and unpredictable in it’s responses to what is supposedly a sure fire fix by man Nature really is.

Farming wise, despite multi billions of what ever being thrown at and expended over the last century in agriculture, the world’s Agricultural scientists and it’s farmers and the political processes supporting food and fiber production have perhaps geo-engineered Nature on a very short term, rather rickety semi permanent basis but failed completely to geo-engineer Nature for farming purposes on permanent basis anywhere.

And there have always been a host of unexpected consequences whenever farmers and researchers have attempted to challenge and change the farming technologies and farming regime as Nature back lashes against the changes and throws in lots of it’s own unexpected curve balls into the farming mix which all have to be accounted for or accommodated if we want to keep growing food and fiber anywhere.

Nature has shown in a most definite way that almost immediately mankind slows down or stops his attempts at geo-engineering of any sort, Nature is right back in there with a whole new lot as well as the old lot of organisms along with their flow on effects to fill all those now vacant slots and niches as mankind pulls back or vacates the scene.

Another example is how Nature got very busy and has mostly reversed in a quarter of a century, the man made, geo -engineered environment, the cleared, built on urban populated region around Chernobyl starting almost immediately the local population was cleaned out of the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

It seems there is huge gap in credibility and understanding of the real, not imagined Nature of the geo-engineerists, for those who propose geo-engineering to achieve some geo-engineering desired result.
They seemingly are totally ignorant and show it, of the harsh realities of dealing with Nature on a day to day, face to face basis in all the proposals they put up.
And they are totally ignorant in that they believe that they are so superior to Nature that they think they can bend Nature in all it’s complexities and subtleness to their will at their behest.

Nature, as I well know as a retired farmer, just laughs and kicks most of mankind’s puny efforts aside and just goes on her way.

And let us know if you come up with any solutions to this ‘problem’ that aren’t worse than the potential problem itself.

A word of warning iterated in Zaliapin and Ghil 2010.

Accordingly, humankind must be careful – in pursuing
its recent interest in geoengineering (Crutzen 2006,Mac-
Cracken 2006) – to stay a course that runs between tipping
points on the warm, as well as on the “cold” side of our cur-
rent climate.

Stephen Schneider thought that climate change was a global emergency, but recommended against big geo-engineering solutions, while acknowledging it was possible to implement them. He thought there might be side effects!

Now, when you reflect that, at the time, the emergency he was referring to was Global Cooling, well…

I like Muller’s citation to his 2004 article on the hockey stick. This is what the “converted skeptic” had to say about global warming then.

“How does this bombshell affect what we think about global warming?

It certainly does not negate the threat of a long-term global temperature increase….
…
If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do), then you still should agree that we are much better off having broken the hockey stick. Misinformation can do real harm, because it distorts predictions. Suppose, for example, that future measurements in the years 2005-2015 show a clear and distinct global cooling trend. (It could happen.) If we mistakenly took the hockey stick seriously–that is, if we believed that natural fluctuations in climate are small–then we might conclude (mistakenly) that the cooling could not be just a random fluctuation on top of a long-term warming trend, since according to the hockey stick, such fluctuations are negligible. And that might lead in turn to the mistaken conclusion that global warming predictions are a lot of hooey. If, on the other hand, we reject the hockey stick, and recognize that natural fluctuations can be large, then we will not be misled by a few years of random cooling.

A phony hockey stick is more dangerous than a broken one–if we know it is broken.”

He links in the 2004 paper to his 2003 article, which has been quoted here before.

“Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.”

“CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”
— Richard Mueller, NY Times 7/28/12http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?pagewanted=all

The last I checked, BEST has nothing to do with attribution. Though Muller seems to forget that occasionally.

But that was not my point. My comment was related to the long running dispute around here over whether Muller was ever a skeptic at all or not. His quotes from 2003 and 2004 show rather clearly that he never dissented from the consensus. He dissented from the practices of some of the consensus advocates. And his concern was in part driven, as shown by the above quotes, by his concern that poor practices would undermine the consensus’ credibility.

Oh, there’s no doubt Muller claimed BEST’s analysis was the reason for his “new found” belief in attribution. But even Eli Rabbett found the “science” of it extremely weak. And you don’t get much more warmist than Eli.

What’s funny is that Rabett was concerned about Muller’s poor science in 2012 for the same reason Muller worried about Mann’s poor science in 2004. They were both concerned that weak efforts would undermine the credibility of the consensus. It would say it is ironic, but then irony is the sine qua non of “climate science”.

I am shocked, shocked to learn that in 2012 Muller was shocked to learn that he was right in 2003 and 2004, and claimed he was thereby a “converted skeptic” for not changing his mind at all.

Yes, that makes his view of the attribution aspect of the BEST analysis so much more believable than Rabett’s, or Dr. Curry’s for that matter.

“Gary: So you prefer Mueller’s views BEFORE he thorougly analyzed the data, but not after.”

The point is that his views before and after “he thoroughly analyzed the data.” were no different on the consensus on attribution, risk, etc. His “skepticism” was of certain sloppy methods (before he invested in his own weak attribution methodology), not of the over all conclusions.

He could pretend to be swayed by the ‘global warming’ pause, and fake being a skeptic again. The he could source a few millions to ‘objectively’ study the issue, and come out as a doubly refromed warmist a year and a half from now.

“The draft report says the available evidence now suggests that above a certain threshold of warming, the Greenland ice sheet will almost disappear within approximately 1000 years, which will result in 7 metres of global sea-level rise. It estimates that the threshold may lie between 1 °C and 4 °C of warming, but is not confident of this figure.”

Did the IPCC not read the latest science on Greenland’s contribution to SLR in the Eemian, the previous interglacial? It did appear in Nature, did it not?

Is the IPCC not aware that during the Eemian, which according to the article included a period of 6,000 years when Greenland was 6 to 8 degrees C warmer than today, that Greenland’s contribution to SLR over the Eemian was about 1.5 meters? In the link below, it says that Greenland’s ice melted no more than 25% during this period:

So that is a maximum of 1/4 of 7.2 meters of SLR (if all of Greenland’s ice melted. 1/4 of 8 meters would be 2 meters, or less than 80 inches. Divide 80 inches by 60 centuries and you get barely over an inch of SLR per century.

And the IPCC is going to claim that in THIS interglacial, we will see 7 meters of SLR from Greenland within 1,000 years, from a temperature increase of between 1 and 4 degrees C??

Global warming is irreversible without massive geoengineering of the atmosphere’s chemistry. This stark warning comes from the draft summary of the latest climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Climate reverses itself. They want to do stuff so they can take credit when it happens. Kind of like ozone.

“The draft report says the available evidence now suggests that above a certain threshold of warming, the Greenland ice sheet will almost disappear within approximately 1000 years, which will result in 7 metres of global sea-level rise. It estimates that the threshold may lie between 1 °C and 4 °C of warming, but is not confident of this figure.

(JC) My reaction to reading the title of this article can be summed up in two words: ‘insane’ and ‘megalomania.’ ”

My reaction to this is “Woop-te-do!” Somebody better tell MIS-5.5, MIS-11.3, and maybe even MIS-7 and MIS-9 in case these post mid-Brunhes extreme end-interglacial delegations don’t get this memo, draft or final reports.

“In terrestrial records from Central and Eastern Europe the end of the Last Interglacial seems to be characterized by evident climatic and environmental instabilities recorded by geochemical and vegetation indicators. The transition (MIS 5e/5d) from the Last Interglacial (Eemian, Mikulino) to the Early Last Glacial (Early Weichselian, Early Valdai) is marked by at least two warming events as observed in geochemical data on the lake sediment profiles of Central (Gro¨bern, Neumark–Nord, Klinge) and of Eastern Europe (Ples). Results of palynological studies of all these sequences indicate simultaneously a strong increase of environmental oscillations during the very end of the Last Interglacial and the beginning of the Last Glaciation. This paper discusses possible correlations of these events between regions in Central and Eastern Europe. The pronounced climate and environment instability during the interglacial/glacial transition could be consistent with the assumption that it is about a natural phenomenon, characteristic for transitional stages. Taking into consideration that currently observed ‘‘human-induced’’ global warming coincides with the natural trend to cooling, the study of such transitional stages is important for understanding the underlying processes of the climate changes.”

“The geology of the Last Interglaciation (sensu stricto, marine isotope substage (MIS) 5e) in the Bahamas records the nature of sea level and climate change. After a period of quasi-stability for most of the interglaciation, during which reefs grew to +2.5 m, sea level rose rapidly at the end of the period, incising notches in older limestone. After brief stillstands at +6 and perhaps +8.5 m, sea level fell with apparent speed to the MIS 5d lowstand and much cooler climatic conditions. It was during this regression from the MIS 5e highstand that the North Atlantic suffered an oceanographic ‘‘reorganization’’ about 11873 ka ago. During this same interval, massive dune-building greatly enlarged the Bahama Islands. Giant waves reshaped exposed lowlands into chevron-shaped beach ridges, ran up on older coastal ridges, and also broke off and threw megaboulders onto and over 20 m-high cliffs. The oolitic rocks recording these features yield concordant whole-rock amino acid ratios across the archipelago. Whether or not the Last Interglaciation serves as an appropriate analog for our ‘‘greenhouse’’ world, it nonetheless reveals the intricate details of climatic transitions between warm interglaciations and near glacial conditions.”

There are two conclusions that can be drawn from this little exercise:

(1) Even on things which actually have happened, the science is not that particularly well-settled. Which makes consideration of the science being settled on things which have not happened yet, a bit unsettling.
(2) IPCC AR4, 2007 reports on Figure 10.33 from page 821 of Chapter 10 that the worst case of sea level rise (business as usual scenario) is +0.59 meters amsl. If we take the best case of normal end extreme interglacial natural climate noise to be Hearty et al’s 2007 +6 meters amsl, then our worst case AGW “signal” is slightly less than an order of magnitude less than the noise. If we take Lysa et al’s 2001 estimate of perhaps +52 meters amsl, then our worst case AGW “signal” might be a little less than 2 orders of magnitude less than the normal end extreme interglacial natural climate noise.

Houston, we have a problem. We need to get our AGW “signal” above the normal end extreme interglacial natural noise or we might not even be able to detect it.

If we just take into consideration “The pronounced climate and environment instability during the interglacial/glacial transition could be consistent with the assumption that it is about a natural phenomenon, characteristic for transitional stages.” then this whole debate becomes as Crocodile Dundee so aptly put it:

(1) Were previous intervals of peak interglaciation terminated by abrupt global coolings?
(2) How close are we to the end of the present interval of peak interglaciation?
(3) Will the ongoing buildup of greenhouse gases alter the natural sequence of events?

Based on varve counts at the end of the Younger Dryas published in 2005, and adding in the subsequent 8 years, the Holocene is presently 11,716 years old. The precession cycle varies between 19kyrs and 23kyrs long and we are the 23kyr part of that oscillation now, making 11,500 half.

Famous astronomer Fred Hoyle, in a paper posted on the Cambridge Conference Network (CCNet) (1999) stated it best:

“This is why the past million years has been essentially a continuing ice-age, broken occasionally by short-lived interglacials. It is also why those who have engaged in lurid talk over an enhanced greenhouse effect raising the Earth’s temperature by a degree or two should be seen as both demented and dangerous. The problem for the present swollen human species is of a drift back into an ice-age, not away from an ice-age.”

Combining all of this, and in consideration of just a few more points, I find that I am not particularly in disagreement with the proposition of insane megalomaniacs unleashing grandiose schemes to “thermostat” the climate. And especially in consideration of the law of unintended consequences.

You see climate change has been very very good to the genus Homo in terms of genetic engineering:

Consider for just a moment the hardiness of the version of H. sapiens mucking about during the Eemian and those that made it through to the Holocene. Then look around you, pay close attention to the “arguments” being advanced by those afraid of AGW, and see if you do not come to the same conclusion I have:

OMG do we need another ice age!

Then take just one more moment to consider that if there is even the slightest possibility that the heathen devil gas CO2 could in any way delay (or god forbid – prevent) onset of the next glacial, then maybe the correct thing to do is strip it out of the late Holocene atmosphere. Geoengineering might actually be key, given the advanced state of hominid myopia apparent all around us and on just about any subject you choose to consider, to climatologically genetically engineering the next best hominid. It is either this or we may have to wait another 200kyrs (to the next eccentricity maxima) for it to perhaps happen naturally.

So be ever thoughtful of both facts and predictions before leaping to a conclusion. It was in fact a LEAP that terminated the last interglacial, the cold Late Eemian Aridity Pulse which lasted 468 years and ended with a precipitous drop into the Wisconsin ice age. And yes, we were indeed there. We had been on the stage as our stone-age selves about the same length of time during that interglacial that our civilizations have been during this one. http://www.particle-analysis.info/LEAP_Nature__Sirocko+Seelos.pdf

Meanwhile, enjoy this precious little interglacial in which all of human civilization has occurred! While it lasts……

There is a part of me that believes this whole nonsense about AGW is the result of the unspoken premise of modern environmentalism that all human impacts on nature are bad. There is nothing scientific about this stance, for science recognizes that all life changes its environment. Life is change.

Yet, it is only under this false premise that we can collectively embrace the notion that a slightly warmer planet is a terrible thing, to be avoided at all costs. Again, science tells us the opposite, that a little warming would be a great thing for the biosphere, and a little cooling would be harmful to the majority of the biosphere. An ice age would be far worse than anything the AGW folks have ever imagined with their exaggerated fears of warming, and that an ice age is imminent, sooner or later.

So, in the absence of this self loathing, which apparently has spread from Western Civilization to all corners of the globe, would we have a global warming scare? I don’t think so. Instead, we would be rejoicing in the increased productivity of the biosphere (life). We would be grateful for the bumper crops we have enjoyed. We would be happy about less frequent blizzards and the all too slight reduction in cold related deaths! It wouldn’t matter if the tiny bit of warming was natural or man-made…we would be grateful for it.

Instead, we see the warming as evil. Could this be because we, as a species, tend to fear change (although we are remarkably good at adapting to it in the long run), or is it human induced change that makes the warming evil. I believe it is the latter and that this whole global warming movement is the product of human irrationality and self loathing; a psychological disorder on a massive scale.

In any case, as we enjoy this 6th minor uptick in temperatures that is the lowest of all the upticks since the end of the last ice age as we continue our ultimate descent into our normal climate in this epoch which is what we call an Ice Age I will enjoy what ever minor benefits pumping plant fertilizer into the atmosphere brings. And that’s the longer view context that includes the past and the future that is usually forgotten as we myopically focus on our short recent era observations.

That is not only a rational approach, but a healthy psychological attitude to embrace as well. I wonder if the warmists will eventually see their own lunacy when they finally retire and excitedly move to Florida.

I beg your pardon? Nothing to do what what I note above. Take it up with Mr. Truther (nice Ad Hom, par for the course) why don’t you. He’ll be happy to describe to you what he has documented, I am sure. The temperature records at NASA and USHCN have been altered. What don’t you understand about that, apart from the sever case of cognitive dissonance it seems to have given you. Take Pepto-Bismol and lie down.

a series of papers dealing with data from NASA’s Mars Curiosity mission were paywalled at Science mag., even though US law requires all such data to be publicly available. The science blogger (and prominent biologist) at the link above decided to “liberate” them….

Judith, I’m surprised by your 100% opposition to geo-engineering, especially based on an analogy to Huxley’s Brave New World. Surely you are not 100% opposed to biotechnology, or view it as inherently totalitarian.

Suppose that scientists and engineers figure out how, using non-toxic substances that enhance cloud cover or scatter sunlight, to inexpensively cool the sea surface in the path of tropical cyclones headed straight for major population centers. Suppose further that the cool-down is enough to keep a Category 1 hurricane from growing into a Category 3 or a tropical storm from becoming a Category 1. I don’t know whether that it will ever be feasible, but I see no a priori moral objection to doing it.

Just as there is nothing sacred about the genes that produce cystic fibrosis or hemophilia, there is nothing sacred about the energy flows that produce hurricanes or determine their storm tracks.

Human management of nature is the main reason people today live longer, safer, more comfortable lives than the kings and nobles of earlier times. If feasible, developing cost-effective hurricane counter-measures would help make the world a better place.

The concern that the same people behind the Kyoto process would try to inflate geo-engineering policies and agreements into a system of “authentic global governance” is valid. But that is a reason to oppose regulatory zealotry and overreach, not to oppose the application of science and engineering to make the world a safer place.

Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on the CO2 ‘control knob’ fallacy: ‘This issue of CO2 as a climate control knob has always bugged me’ — Curry: ‘But on what time scales does it make sense to think of CO2 as a control knob? That is a very relevant question in context of CO2 mitigation policies that doesn’t seem to get asked…Until we get past the IPCC’s paradigm paralysis that climate change on multidecadal time scales is completely externally forced, there won’t be much progress on really understanding climate change.

Dr Judith Curry’s comment on a “control knob fallacy” is valid.

You may be interested to know I proved in 1997 Earth’s thermostat adjusting fossil fuel combustion rate will never work because the system is un-measurable, unobservable and uncontrollable. These are derived with mathematical theorems of control systems engineering dynamic models, properties of differential equations, developed and used since 1970. We also have stability criteria theorems, showing proposed atmospheric tipping points do not exist.

Another weakness is humanity’s lack of a rigorous method for properly setting the thermostat setpoint. This problem constitutes an optimization of a risky tradeoff, which I have solved: CLIFFTENT™. Provided there is consensus on the objective function. Yes, I said consensus.

Conclusion? The whole AGW, CC, GHGT literature is a worthless mess. CO2 is green plant food. Chemical engineers are not allowed to get involved.

The questions that people should ask here do not concern science so much as finance and politics:

1. How much research grant money has the government already pumped into geoengineering?
2. How many very rich, very powerful venture capitalists have ‘made a play’ on geoengineering?
3. Will we actually be able to measure, monitor and control the outcomes of geoengineering experiments (as opposed to computer simulations)?

The reason these questions are important is as follows:
1. If lots of grant money has been made available, some scientists have bet their careers on geoengineering and will do what it takes to keep the topic fundable.
2. If VCs have pumped in hundreds of millions, they are looking to retrieve billions, so some high profile IPOs or trade sales will fuel arguments, expectations etc. IPOs of this nature are prepared for by ‘shaping the market’ i.e. distorting perceptions in the media. So long as they get their financial exit, they couldn’t give a monkeys whether the market dies an untimely death thereafter. That’s VC investing for you.
3. Your lives, your health and the future of humanity is affected if scientists and investors go hung ho with climate alteration programmes. Think Star Wars with microwaves. The CIA creating a winter to end all winters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other Stans. The Monsoon being destroyed by Americans for geopolitical purposes. The Chinese and Germans wanting the NE Passage to be open for 8 weeks a year, every year, so they screw up the arctic ice cycles. The US engineering cold, since they can shift grain production southward but Russia and Ukraine are less capable. Starving the Russians for power?? It’s acceptable collateral damage to the CIA.

This has all the ‘frankenstein’ implications that molecular biology had in the early 1970s.

Then, the scientists got together and drew up what they thought were an ethical set of guidelines for genetic engineering which broadly served humanity well for the next 40 years.

Perhaps it is time for dispassionate, reputable, upstanding and morally robust climatologists to do the same for geoengineering??

rtj1211, Your comments explain why professional chemical process control systems engineers are not allowed to participate with the unlicensed nonprofessionals in charge. We must be licensed to practice engineering, others are allowed to practice it without licenses.

Earth’s atmosphere is a chemical process system, modeled by our PDE’s for conservation of mass, momentum and energy, chemical kinetics and systems engineering.

I have built hundreds of temperature controllers now operating oil refineries and pchem plants worldwide. There are millions in homes, buildings and cars. Last thing an engineer wants to do is build a system that won’t work, is unsafe or uneconomic. Which is why scientific, legal and economic feasibility are the first things we check.

Which is why chemical process engineers are not allowed to get involved with designing Earth’s thermostat. We can just sit by and watch AGW promoters waste money floundering and publishing. They make lots of money doing research on the impossible. Is that hot or cool?

David Appell | September 25, 2013 at 10:07 pm |
Tampered? In what way? How?
===============================================

Well, David – it would seem that, as my mother used to say, the cat has got your tongue on the matter of (fraudulent? Some might say so. I couldn’t possibly comment) tampering with the temperature records.

There’s more here, demonstrating how this has appeared to change history. I’m afraid that for some reason, there are a lot of graphs in a single jpeg file, but if you scroll down to just before half way, and look at the section headed

“Later, activist published…

you will see how this reworks history towards the catastrophists’ tale. For tale it is.

Look at earth temperature for the past ten thousand years.
Earth already has an excellent Thermostat and Temperature control system. Let it do what only Earth already does really well!
Does anyone actually look at the recent ten thousand year ice core data and say:

“WOW, this has worked really well and if you place modern data next to the data for the past ten thousand years, it is well inside the bounds and not headed out”